Recommended Reading
Learn more about the adult industry and the issues we face.
Financial Discrimination
“Controlling the keys to the Golden City”: The payment ecosystem and the regulation of adult webcamming and subscription-based fan platforms
Rébecca S. Franco (Dec 2024)The definitional creep: Payment processing and the moral ordering of sexual content
Val Webber and Rébecca S. Franco (Nov 2024)‘This is fucking nuts’: the role of payment intermediaries in structuring precarity and dependencies in platformized sex work
Val Webber and Rébecca S. Franco (Sep 2024)Financial Discrimination and the Adult Industry Report
Free Speech Coalition (2023)
High Risk Hustling: Payment Processors Sexual Proxies and Discrimination by Design
Zahra Stardust, Danielle Blunt, Gabriella Garcia, Lorelei Lee, Kate D'Adamo, Rachel Kuo (Winter 2023)“Shut Up and Take My Money!”: Revenue Chokepoints, Platform Governance, and Sex Workers’ Financial Exclusion
Bianca Beebe, International Journal of Gender, Sexuality and Law (Jul 2022)The Impact of Mastercard's Adult Content Policy on Adult Content Creators: Survey Results & Analysis
Val Webber (Feb 2022)Financial Discrimination of Sex Workers in the UK: A research report from National Ugly Mugs
National Ugly Mugs (Dec 2021)Shut & Shut Out: Access to Financial Services and Online Payments for Sex Workers in the US
Center for LGBTQ Economic Advancement & Research (2021)
Censorship
Age Verification
Age verification for pornography access? Our research shows it fails on many levels
Zahra Stardust and Alan McKee (June 10, 2024)
How to Address Children’s Online Safety in the United States
Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (June 3, 2024)More than just a number: How determining user age impacts startups
Engine (February 2024)Would New Legislation Actually Make Kids Safer Online? Analyzing the Consequences of Recent Youth Online Safety Proposals
Jennifer Huddleston / Cato Institute (April 2023)The XXX Factor: Why internet freedom hinges on pornography
European Policy Information Center (December 2023)Challenges with Identifying Minors Online: A Brief Introduction
Congressional Research Service (November 2022)Online age verification: balancing privacy and the protection of minors
French National Commission on Informatics and Liberty (September 2022)Children and the Internet: Legal Considerations in Restricting Access to Content
Congressional Research Service (March 2022)
Social Media
Free Speech Challenges to Florida and Texas Social Media Laws
Congressional Research Service (September 2022)Manifesto for sex-positive social media
Zahra Stardust, Emily van der Nagel, Katrin Tiidenberg, Jiz Lee, Em Coombes, Mireille Miller-Young (August 2022)Posting Into the Void: Studying the Impact of Shadowbanning on Sex Workers and Activists
Hacking//Hustling (2020)
Constitutional Rights
The Right to Privacy & Substantive Due Process
Substantive Due Process and a Comparison of Approaches to Sexual Liberty
William Council, Fordham Law Review (2020)Pulling the Fig Leaf off the Right of Privacy: Sex and the Constitution
Donald H.J. Hermann, DePaul Law Review (2005)
Porn’s Impact
What Do We Know About the Effects of Pornography After Fifty Years of Academic Research?
Alan McKee, Katerina Litsou, Paul Byron, and Roger Ingham (June 2022)
Aggression & Violence
Most Sex Offenders Do Not Rely on Scripts Learned from Porn
Psychology Today (August 2022)Who Likes Violent Porn? New Research Upends Expectations
Psychology Today (July 2022)
Porn as a Public Health Crisis
Should Public Health Professionals Consider Pornography a Public Health Crisis?
American Journal of Public Health (February 2020)
Addiction
Constructing Pornography Addiction’s Harms in Science, News Media, and Politics
Kelsey Burke, Alice MillerMacPhee (March 2020)
Human Trafficking
Decreasing Human Trafficking through Sex Work Decriminalization
Erin Albright, JD, and Kate D’Adamo, MA (2017)Lies, damned lies and sex work statistics
Maggie McNeill / Washington Post (2014)Sex Work is Not Trafficking
Global Network of Sex Work Projects (2011)
FOSTA/SESTA
Five Reflections from Four Years of FOSTA/SESTA
Kendra Albert, Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal (Apr 2022)Sex Trafficking: Online Platforms and Federal Prosecutions
US Government Accountability Office (June 2021)Erased: The Impact of FOSTA-SESTA & Removal of Backpage
Hacking//Hustling (2020)How a Petition to Shut Down Pornhub Got Two Million Signatures
Samantha Cole, Vice (Sept 2020)FOSTA: A Hostile Law with a Human Cost
Lura Chamberlain (2019)